Marc Webb’s 500 days of Summer (2009) is a film which immediately proclaims itself as an anti-love story. The film’s central protagonists Tom and Summer spend the majority of the story in an undefined romantic relationship, with each having vitally different expectations of the other—setting the relationship up for failure.
In online discourse, the film has been thoroughly dissected, and meme-ified. For many young people who are mostly aware of the film’s online relevance, it serves as a cult classic cautionary tale against relationships, with many viewers having differing opinions of both characters’ motivations. The question of ‘who was the villain?’ has become somewhat of a classic first-date debate, with original critics, ‘film bros’, and many male viewers overall traditionally attributing all blame to Summer for ‘leading on’ our male protagonist before ending up with someone else.
The film isn’t a love story, and rather earnestly depicts disillusionment, and unrealistic expectations of love
However, the film makes no effort to suggest that Tom is fully at fault either. In fact it ends with him meeting a promising new love interest, having moved on. Many people have started to refer to the relationship dynamics of the film as examples of incompatible attachment styles, using the film to further explain relationship psychology, and further centre its relevance in modern issues of dating and relationships.
The film isn’t a love story, and rather earnestly depicts disillusionment, and unrealistic expectations of love—transcending beyond the hero and the villain rhetoric. In all honesty, I think the debate of these characters’ levels of wrongdoing has gotten dated. It seems to be a cheap projection of the critics’ own experience, no matter which party they represent.
It is impossible to acknowledge this debate without addressing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, After all the portrayal of Summer made Zooey Deschanel the poster child for the trope. While we may think we have evolved past the usage of the term, the discourse around this film in particular seems to point to all the places it’s still embedded into the conversation.
Even in criticism, [Summer] is unable to escape the confined dimension [of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl]
Interestingly, the creator of the trope himself has renounced the term and its connotations. In his counter essay ‘I’m sorry for coining the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”‘, the critic reflects on the term by recognising its further damage to the cultural conversation, rather than advantages. The evolving response to 500 Days of Summer seems to continuously suffer from this. Summer’s negative reception lies exactly in her idealisation, shown to us through Tom’s obstructed point of view, and even in criticism she is unable to escape the confined dimension.
The most important thing is that Tom and Summer aren’t meant to be together in any iteration. I wish the conversations around the film didn’t only centre around one character’s ‘villainous’ presence as opposed to the other—creating an entire, unwanted gendered discourse. Instead I’d like to think of it as the film which opens us up to the thought of a relationship simply not working, no matter how idealised and desired.
“500 Days of Summer” by sinemabed is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.